The Beltway Assassin by Richard Fox

easy jump over ten feet looked like a doubtful situation over fifteen feet.
    Ritter’s arms pinwheeled as he fell against the far ledge. His upper body smashed against the roof with the crack of broken ribs, and his fingertips scraped against the asphalt rooftop for purchase as gravity’s cruel indifference pulled him away from safety. His legs scraped against the wall, failing to get a foothold. He dug his elbows in and arrested his slide backward, then inched forward with trembling arms.
    A bullet ricocheted off the side of the building with a zing as he swung his legs over the side. He rolled away from the edge and out of the line of fire from the shooters on the ground.
    His rib cage burned with pain from the cracked ribs; each short and shallow breath was a hot poker against his chest. It’s only pain , he told himself. There would be time to deal with the injury after he escaped.
    He rolled onto his hands and knees, and looked around. There was a rusted ladder on the south side of the roof leading to a fire escape and a closed-door shack leading to the stairwell. Gunshots—short bursts of SWAT M4 carbines mixed with the peals of AK-47 and shotgun blasts—erupted from the drug house. What little remained of the windows shattered as rounds blasted through them.
    He struggled to his feet and stumbled toward the fire escape ladder. The sound of booted feet thumping up the stairwell to the roof halted his escape. There was no way he’d make it to the ground without a few new holes if a SWAT team made it to the roof in the next minute.
    He pulled his combat knife from the sheath and ran to the doorway. There was a fifty-fifty chance this would work. His heart skipped a beat when he saw hinges; the door was designed to open out onto the roof, and he had a chance to escape.
    Ritter rammed the knife into the door frame a few inches below the hinge. He hammered it home with his fist. An improvised doorjamb in place, he clutched an arm against his broken ribs and ran back to the ladder.
    He hated to leave the blade behind; it had been a gift from Carlos and Mike for his first kill and his first mission with the Caliban Program. The words cry havoc engraved on the blade were a testament to the team’s ethos and lethal nature. A better lesson from that first mission, one that guided him now, and the unofficial motto of covert operatives everywhere, was do not get caught .
    Carlos would understand losing the blade to ensure his escape. Mike…not so much.
    He got three rungs down when someone slammed into the access door. He heard muffled curses and saw the door rattle from repeated kicks against it. He was halfway down the ladder when he heard a shotgun blast; whoever wanted access to the roof must have decided to blow the door off its hinges.
    Ritter glanced down; there was nothing but rock-hard concrete to break his fall. He wrapped his hands on the outside of the ladder, braced his feet against the rails, and slid down. Even with gloves, the friction burned through them and sent pain screaming through his hands. He gripped hard as a second blast came from the roof and slowed his descent.
    Slowed, he didn’t stop. The ladder ended six feet from the ground, and Ritter found himself with a sold grip on air as he fell. He brought his feet and knees together out of instinct; the ingrained parachute-landing fall training he’d learned at Fort Benning Airborne School was designed to prevent injury when hitting the ground from height.
    The parachute-landing fall that should have gone feet-calf-thigh-hip against the ground went feet-ass-skull as he crashed to the ground. Stars burst in front of his eyes as he used a dumpster to get to his feet.
    Get away. Got to get away . He focused on those thoughts as his body screamed for respite. He stumbled away and peeled his jacket off. An alley ahead of him gave him the option to go right or left. He tossed the jacket to the left and goaded his body to a jog as he went right. His cracked